Car Owner Sentenced to Prison for Shooting Alleged Thieves

A woman in Missouri didn’t wait for cops to find the thieves who stole her SUV and arrest them.

Instead, Demesha Coleman, 37, took things into her own hands and opened fire on the people she thought were responsible while they were sitting in her car. This started a gunfight in the middle of a petrol station. But she also killed a person who wasn’t involved with stealing her car. The first person she killed was a man sitting in the passenger seat of her car.

Coleman was given 13 years in prison on Friday. In March, a jury found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the deaths of Darius Jackson, 19, who was in the passenger seat of the SUV, and Joseph Farrar, 49, who was at the petrol station buying medicine for his son. A third person was also hit by bullets.

It wasn’t clear if the people in the car were the ones who had taken it.

Gabe Gore, the circuit attorney for St. Louis County, said in a statement, “This case shows how dangerous it can be to take matters into your own hands.” “Mrs. Coleman’s careless actions tragically caused two deaths and a serious injury.” The defendant should get the term the jury suggests because they caused this needless death.

The fighting took place in St. Louis on December 21, 2022. Someone broke into Coleman’s home in St. Louis County that night and stole her Hyundai SUV. Coleman used the GPS in the car to find the Speedie petrol station in the 8000 block of North Broadway. She called 911 twice, but in the end she decided to go after the car by herself. Coleman drove to the petrol station with her 19-year-old son. When they got there, she saw four guys sitting in her car. Coleman and her son met a third man, but in the news release, prosecutors did not say who he was.

Coleman and that man walked up to the SUV and began shooting. The thieves in the other car fired back. Jackson and Farrar were killed by Coleman’s shots.

Coleman’s lawyers said she shot because she felt threatened by one of the guys in her car, who they said was brandishing a gun at her. There were two counts of first-degree murder brought against Coleman, but the jury found her not guilty on those charges. They did find her guilty of armed illegal action and manslaughter without consent, though. The jury suggested nine years in jail for manslaughter by accident and four years for armed criminal action. The judge agreed with the jury’s decision.

NBC outlet KDSK was told by Farrar’s sister that he was at the petrol station to get flu medicine for his 11-year-old son, who was sick.